The right to be wrong

Have you been wrong today? Have you failed at basic logic at least once since breakfast? Have you propagated a myth or notion that despite its spuriousness has persisted through laziness and avoidance of fact-checking? Have you done your duty as a human being and exercised your right as a citizen?

Thousands of people are wrong every day. You can find them blabbering on the tube, yakking in cafés and especially on the internet, where this function is held sacred, third only behind cats and porn. Open any news website, scroll to the comments section and you will be greeted by heaps of messages of people who spar with fallacies using the same skill that master fencers employ. But what you may think is merely the noxious combination of an unwarranted sense of entitlement, a lack of proper education and way too much free time, is in fact a proud service indispensable to society.

Wrongness is not something that everyone across history has been able to afford: until not too long ago, people were punished and killed for kneeling in front of the wrong monarch; in the not-so-distant past

Thousands of people are wrong every day. You can find them blabbering on the tube, yakking in cafés and especially on the internet, where this function is held sacred

people could’ve found themselves on the burning side of a stake for claiming that the Christ’s left nostril hair was the wrong shade of yellow while he was being crucified; and in almost any age, you could be persecuted if your skin was the wrong colour, if you were born in the wrong country, or if you simply looked at someone in the wrong way.

But it is our right to be wrong. We must have no fear in picking a candidate, an idea, a preference and holding it as right despite evidence to the contrary. We must be able to claim whichever band we prefer to be the best without fear of repercussion, regardless of actual measurable talent or

The next time you see someone disagree with you despite his opinion being blatantly mistaken, delete that scathing multi-paragraph post in which you denounce him and all his ancestors as morons, and refrain from trying to bash some sense into him

pleasantness of song. We must be allowed to stick to our personal set of beliefs even in the face of insurmountable evidence that proves us wrong. Freedom of speech means that no matter how inane, inaccurate and inarticulate our thoughts get, we must be able to stand by them and hold them dear, because they are our thoughts, and it is our prerogative to be wrong.

People died for this prerogative. Wars were fought, tyrants deposed and democracies established, so that today you could express your opinion on current issues without getting the punch to the back of the head you so richly deserve for being so demonstrably wrong. And we’re all the better because of it! We have enjoyed the period of greatest peace, equality and prosperity in the history of mankind since we’ve all allowed ourselves to be wrong. How could it not be? Attempting to punish everyone for their wrongness cannot be done with our meagre resources: too many people are just too damn wrong for too much of the time. It’s better to let them stay in the error of their ways, and concentrate on technologies that allow them to share fallacies with strangers from across the globe or medical advances that can make them live longer and better, though they won’t know how.

Wars were fought, tyrants deposed and democracies established, so that today you could express your opinion on current issues without getting the punch to the back of the head you so richly deserve for being so demonstrably wrong

Besides, wrong people provide invaluable services to the community: they make smart people look good by comparison; they put arguments to the test; they spend a lot of money if you know what to sell, angmongst other things. And if everyone starts thinking the wrong stuff, and we’re all wrong in some way, who can even tell? If everyone’s opinion is incorrect, who can even figure out who’s right? Apart from the smart people, obviously: they know. But the masses, the many who spend their lives in idle chatter on forum boards and public transportation, those who choose who they’re going to vote in their fever dreams and those who are easily confused by common sense, they can all be wrong together, and in their shared state their wrongness will seem less so.

The next time you see someone disagree with you despite his opinion being blatantly mistaken, delete that scathing multi-paragraph post in which you denounce him and all his ancestors as morons, and refrain from trying to bash some sense into him. He’s just expressing one of his fundamental rights, perhaps the most fundamental right of all: wrongness is a prerogative of sentient beings, and being able to be wrong is what makes us human.